


Ionic

by writerdragonfly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Hale of a Good Pack, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-10 21:42:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15958106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: “The greater the energy it takes to break the bond, the stronger that bond must be. It turns out that most ionic bonds are considerably more difficult to break.”In which the alpha bite doesn’t make a pack, but Stiles does—all on his own.





	Ionic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissSugarPlum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSugarPlum/gifts).



> For Kelsey, because I can.
> 
> This is the literal _most_ I've written in months. 
> 
> I don't know when any of my fics will update and I've decided that I'm okay with that. I'll get back to them when it feels right. That being said, I'm actively writing the next part to several fics at the moment, mostly Teen Wolf. It's... a relief, actually, to be back with these kids. They weren't my first but they're one that I can easily slip back into and read again whenever I want. 
> 
> Please enjoy this interlude into a post-Season Two Teen Wolf. 
> 
> As it pertains to Scott, he won't be in this fic. He's not dead, but his absence will be addressed and noted. He may or may not appear in a sequel, should I ever write one.

* * *

* * *

#  ONE

* * *

# 

 

##  _ Blanket _

 

The first few hours are hazy. It’s stupid, but he can’t  _ quite  _ recall how he ended up here, covered in his own blood and bracketed by snarling, protective  _ werewolves.  _ He remembers Gerard Argent and the basement and the hits that kept coming and he remembers Chris Argent finding them and freeing them and Stiles asking them not to leave. 

 

He remembers the Preserve, trees as far as the eye could see and trying  _ so hard _ to keep up with Erica and Boyd when the wolves descended. 

 

He doesn’t remember being caught. He certainly had been, and so had they. Why else would they be here?

 

He doesn’t remember being bitten, but there’s a sluggishly bleeding tear in his shoulder that he doesn’t think he can attribute to anything else. Everything smells  _ sharper _ , keener.

 

He doesn’t think he will die; surely whatever higher power there is wouldn’t let him have the gifts of the bite just to kill him anyway. Still, he can tell that he’s not reacting like the Others want him to.

 

And neither are the wolves. 

 

Boyd and Erica make sense. They’re known quantities; two teenagers connected to him through the bite  _ and _ their shared trauma. 

 

The other wolf... isn’t.

 

Still, the other werewolf is snarling at the Others, standing in front of Stiles like a guard. 

 

There’s a... a feeling, he supposes, that connects them. He wouldn’t be able to explain it in the moment, not to someone who  _ couldn’t _ feel it, in a way that didn’t sound crazy. 

 

It’s like there’s a warm blanket wrapped around him, tight enough to squeeze but not enough to hurt, and it is pulling toward Boyd and Erica and the new wolf and  _ other wolves outside this place _ , but not to the Others. Not toward their red-eyed captors but to people outside their prison.

 

_ Dad _ , his mind supplies,  _ Derek, Scott, Lydia, and perhaps even Jackson _ .

 

He doesn’t  _ know _ though, not for sure. 

 

What he does know is this. 

 

There are five alpha werewolves--the Others. Four physically male, one physically female. One of the males is blind, but somehow this doesn’t stop him.

 

They want something from them. Stiles doesn’t know if they want to see Stiles turn and kill his fellow prisoners, if they want him to turn and kill someone else, if they want him to turn at all. 

 

He doesn’t know what they want, but he knows this. Erica, Boyd, New Wolf,  _ Stiles _ . They won’t let them win. They can’t.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


By the time the bite heals over, Stiles knows the Others  _ won’t _ win. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**-x-**

  
  
  
  


##  _ Delinquent _

Any other kid with the kind of record Stiles has, and he would think  _ delinquent runaway _ but investigate anyway. Any other kid but Stiles. 

 

The thing is—regardless of how strained their relationship, no matter how much trust there isn’t—he knows his kid. Stiles would never leave him without a goodbye, not after Claudia. He wouldn’t just  _ leave.  _

 

He thinks, maybe, it wouldn’t be that surprising if Stiles  _ did  _ run away. He’s so tied up in secrets and lies that he wouldn’t be surprised. But Stiles would  _ never  _ leave without saying something. Without leaving a message. 

 

Certainly wouldn’t leave by disappearing after a lacrosse game where he looked so free. 

 

He knows what the deputies are thinking, what he would think in their shoes. 

 

_ Delinquent runaway.  _

 

But they don’t know Stiles like he does. 

 

_ Maybe this is how all the parents always feel.  _

 

**-x-**

 

Lydia Martin shows up on his doorstep nearly two hours after Stiles disappears, clearly distraught and looking for Stiles. He’s been juggling calls between hospitals and his deputies, called Melissa and left messages on Stiles’ cell, with no answers. The Jeep was being monitored at the high school, his deputies coming Beacon Hills. 

 

There was no sign of his son. 

 

He’d given Lydia a cup of tea and a hug, and sent her on her way. 

 

She’d promised to keep an eye out for Stiles. 

 

“ _ He’d do the same for me,”  _ she’d said, and he knew without a doubt that was true. 

 

It was also why he didn’t think that Stiles had run away. 

 

If nothing else, Stiles was fiercely loyal to those he considered his. 

 

**-x-**

 

By the time the sun rises, there’s still no sign of Stiles. Jackson Whittemore makes a surprise Lazarus impression and drops the restraining order, but Jackson and his parents all look honestly surprised at his disappearance. 

 

It’s the visit after the Whittemore's that tells him how wrong Stiles’ disappearance really is. 

 

Derek Hale had no reason to show up on his doorstep. 

 

“I heard about Stiles,” Derek Hale says, showing far more familiarity with his son than he prefers, “there’s something you need to know.”

 

**-x-**

****

 

##  _ Ripples _

 

The Others don’t talk to them. Boyd, Erica, and New Wolf—their priority is protecting Stiles. It makes it easy for the Others to corral them into the vault without fighting back. Stiles is still weak, the bite slow to change him. 

 

Stiles is the reason why they’re stuck here, terrified out of their minds. 

 

He won’t be the reason they die. He refuses. 

 

Erica takes a sick slice from her arm to up near her neck before the door closes and the line of mountain ash is set, trying to rush them once she’s sure Boyd and New Wolf have him. 

 

The feeling of warmth and soft and belonging and connection that he’d felt, it’s almost wiped away when the vault door closes. Muted, as if placed behind an almost perfect wall. He thinks—no, he knows—that he would be lost to the panic that builds in his chest, if not for the worry over Erica. 

 

She isn’t healing, not like she should. 

 

**-x-**

 

The wound is deep and Stiles doesn’t precisely know what to do. He does his best, they all do. Stiles’ undershirt goes to making makeshift bandages, pulling the skin back together as much as they can manage. She’s crying, tears dripping down her face but not a sound from her lips. 

 

None of them are making much sound, working quietly in tandem for their injured packmate.

 

Packmate. Because that’s what they are, what  _ Stiles _ is. 

 

Pack.

 

**-x-**

  
  


“Your friend... what’s her name?” New Wolf asks once they’ve got Erica settled down against a wall, her head pillowed in Boyd’s lap as he gently combs his fingers through her hair. 

 

“Erica. Erica Reyes. And he’s Boyd.”

 

“And you?”

 

“Stiles. Stiles Stilinski.”

 

“ _ I remember you _ ,” she says, “I sat in front of you in second grade. Mieczysław, right?”

 

“ _ Cora Hale?” _

 

Once he says it, he knows it’s true. He can feel it, rippling outward. Erica pulls herself up, Boyd holding her steady.

 

“Is she--” Erica asks, a little unsteadily. 

 

“Derek will be glad to see you,” Stiles says to Cora Hale instead, “Our Alpha.”

 

Calling Derek his alpha settles an uneasy part of his soul. 

 

**-x-**

 

##  _ Werewolves _

When he was a kid, he used to devour horror; stories, movies, comics... it didn’t matter. They were like bread and butter to someone who didn’t lack for much, an excitement he craved. A cheap thrill.

 

By the time he had graduated high school, lost his parents, left and returned from his two tours in the army, he knew that horror existed and it was  _ human _ . 

 

Ending up back home in Beacon County, inheriting his childhood home, it just led him to realizing that he wanted to help people find hope in horrible situations. He’d found his own hope, in Claudia and later in Stiles, and he strived to be the best husband, father, and cop he could be. 

 

But now, after the past few months, standing in front of a red-eyed werewolf, all he could think of was cheap newsprint and sordid tales and felt like he didn’t understand how the world worked after all. 

 

“ _ Werewolves _ ,” he says, because it makes sense as much as it doesn’t, still gives him that chilling feeling he’d loved as a kid and hated as a man, “You’re a werewolf.”

 

“Stiles figured it out on his own too,” Hale says. Hale’s face morphs back to a human appearance as he speaks, just like the vampires in  _ Buffy. _ God, he hopes vampires aren’t real too. 

 

He clears his throat before he speaks again, mostly because he needs the beat to pull himself together, “Is my son a werewolf?”

 

Hale shakes his head, but he hadn’t really expected a yes. He may not know what’s real and what’s not about werewolves, but he knows there’s no way Stiles would have been able to keep that personal loss of agency to himself, not after Claudia. 

 

“Scott is.”

 

It shouldn’t be able to stand on its own, but it does.  _ It all does.  _

 

“ _ Whittemore _ ,  _ Lahey _ ,  _ Martin _ ?”

 

“I don’t think we have time for the whole story, Sir, but there’s a few more things you should know.”

 

Not enough time... 

 

“Do you know who has my son?”

 

“I know who did.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**-x-**

  
  
  


He doesn’t know how the Argent family has gotten away with so much shit over the years, but he knows one thing for sure. 

 

They’re not getting away with anything else if he has anything to do with it. 

  
  


* * *

* * *

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> *comes in fifteen minutes late with a **pumpkin spice** latte* ;)


End file.
